


Normal is the New Normal

by mybrotherharry



Series: Arrow Drabbles [4]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 5x17 Reaction fic, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, I strongly imply that an OC is horribly hurt, Kapuishon was quite triggery, Maturity, Oliver is traumatized, Post Kapuishon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Trauma and Violence, Spoilers for 5x17, Trauma, Unrequited Love, post 5x17, so please bear that in mind?, there is description of the ways in which Oliver was hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 17:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10926264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybrotherharry/pseuds/mybrotherharry
Summary: For the post-Kapuishon (5x17) prompt request, "why can't Oliver just give up the hood and be happy? Why do we have to put that man through hell?"An unconventional AU in which Oliver tries normalcy, the team lets him, and Olicity don't get back together.(Don't yell at me all at once.)





	Normal is the New Normal

**Author's Note:**

> This happened because a certain tumblr user and I kept yelling at each other about Kapuishon (5x17).
> 
> We just want Oliver to be happy. I wanted to write a fic in which he says, screw you all, I am going to not be the Arrow anymore. 
> 
> I might not have pulled it off.

He won't let her touch him. 

In all the time she's known him, even in the early days, when they'd just been IT girl and CEO, even then, he would let her patch him up. He'd let her casually throw an arm around his shoulders. He'd let her run fingers through his hair, and allow her cheek to rest on his shoulder. 

They have always been affectionate, even when that affection had been platonic and friendly. 

Even after their break-up, she'd not stopped casually touching him.

 Now, for the first time since she's known him, he's flinching away.

 She'd reached for him, fingers clasping antiseptic-drenched Q-tips and bandages, trying to hold onto the muscle in his abdomen - the only wound free area on him. He'd flinched away before her fingers had made contact.

 He won't let her touch him, and that cements it for her.

 Prometheus is going to die, and she won't rest until he does.

*

 "What do you think happened down there?" she asks Diggle, as they stand guard over a sleeping Oliver.

 After futile attempts to throw them out, Oliver'd given in to the inevitable and collapsed on the cot. Now, he looks angelic and peaceful in sleep, his exhaustion overwhelming and keeping the nightmares at bay. Dig has already turned him on his side a couple of times he's rolled over, trying to protect the still smarting bruises on his chest and back.

 "I don't know, Felicity." 

"But you do know," she presses. "You already know more than I do. You just looked at him and your voice changed. Your tone changed. You knew he was hurt - not in the usual way."

 "There are ways a soldier can tell -"

 "So tell me then," she insists. "Help me understand."

 He is silent for a moment, clearly debating with himself, before he clears this throat.

 "Arrow to the shoulder," he says, and her eyes trace the wounds on Oliver's torso. "From short range. Less than a couple of feet, maybe."

 She winces. You asked for this, she reminds herself. You asked to know, so that you can help him.

 "Knife to the chest, thighs, and toes. Flayed flesh on the bottom of the feet. Burn on the chest, I am guessing from a blowtorch. Whipping to the back. Broken nose. Bullet in the left arm, but he carved it out with a knife. Broken, or at the very least, sprained knee."

 She swallows. Diggle isn't done, though.

 "We need to get antibiotics in him," he tells her. "And arrange for a chest X-ray."

 She raises an eyebrow questioningly.

 "He most likely inhaled water to the lungs," he says without looking at her.

 She wants to throw up, and puts her head in her hands.

 "You asked."

 "I asked. But he lived it."

 "I am not worried about the physical injuries."

 "How can you not - what do you - what?"

 "Oliver's been through worse, physically."

_Isn't that just perfect._

 "You are - you are serious."

 "Completely serious," Dig nods. "This is not even close to a fraction of what he's dealt with before. Slade alone, I mean."

 "I hate this. I hate everything."

 "Chase got to him, Felicity," Dig says, now looking at her with an intense expression on his face, the expression he uses when he's trying to be dead serious. "He's gotten through Oliver's mental barriers, and that's the part I am worried about."

 A part of her knew. That's the thing, she's suspected since the warmth in his gaze shut down like a shutter lid coming down on a storefront. His eyes are empty now. So cold, and empty like he's lost.

 Digg sits with her in silence, as her hands shake in her lap and treacherous tears make their way down her cheeks. They sit together and watch Oliver Queen sleep.

 * 

He wants to rent an apartment.

 For the first time since they broke up, Oliver has stopped pretending that he has been living, showering and eating in the lair.

 “A small studio, nothing too fancy. Just a place that’s quiet, secluded and large enough to include a bed,” he tells her when she pulls up a browser. He is still weak enough to run out of breath after speaking a couple of sentences. The bandages around his chest strain with every agonizing breath, and he’s been nursing the styrafoam of tea she’s pressed into his hands for nearly half an hour now.

 He won’t eat or sleep, and she pretends to not notice his tossing and turning on the cot all night.

 He hasn’t picked up his bow in days.

 “You could go for a place that is like, two notches above utilitarian, you know?”

 “I don’t need anything fancy, Felicity,” he croaks out. She guides the tea in his hands to his mouth, one hand still typing away on her keyboard.

 “Drink,” she commands and he quietly obeys, taking a sip. “Let me see - what’s your budget?”

 “You know the salary of the Mayor,” he says, a hint of a smile in his tone.

 “I thought you also had some of the remains of your trust fund saved away?” she asks, knowing very well that he sold the only remaining Queen property in Starling and put the money in an account for William.

 “For Thea,” he says. She feels something warm settle in her belly. He will _always_ take care of his people. “And some of it is sitting in a savings account for baby John. I get by with my salary.”

 “Does Digg know?”

 “No,” he says in a very firm voice. “And he _doesn’t need_ to know, Felicity.”

 “Sir yes sir,” she smiles. “Boo-ya, this is a nice place. They have visit hours right now. You wanna go take a look? I will drive.”

 He smiles at her for a moment, and in the light of the lair, he looks warm and welcoming and soft, and she wants to hug him and promise that everything will be alright.

 “I can’t,” he tells her, and his tone implies he isn’t referring to physical ability. “I just - can you - I hate to ask this of you, but would you -”

 “Find you a place, stock it with the essentials, pick up the key and give you the address?”

 “Please?”

 Everything about him, from the slumped line of his shoulders to his hangdog expression makes her want to wrap him in a blanket and never let go. He could have asked her for nuclear missiles and she’d have found a way to get them to him. This is a small request.

 “I am going to decorate the hell out of your utilitarian apartment. See you later,” she kisses him on the cheek, grabs her keys and sets out to find him a place to live.

 *

She finds a great place.

It’s a one bedroom loft close to City Hall, with all doors and windows in sightlines from every point of the open plan floor. She may not know much about decorating, but she knows him very well and can accommodate for his _unique_ brand of paranoia.

She ropes Thea into helping her. Coordinating throw pillow colors and couch cushions may not be her forte, but Thea is like a storm when it comes to shopping for upholstery.

Both of them know Oliver’s sensibilities and manage to keep each other in check from going overboard. They find muted greys and whites for the couch set, an armchair, the dining tables and chairs, and a gorgeous set of training mats and weights to go in one corner of the living room.

Felicity cannot entirely let him live without color, so she indulges in bright yellow curtains for the tall windows. At a thrift store, they find a canvas of an artist’s rendering of a silhouette of the Hood on matte, and Felicity stops on her way at a photography place to have it framed for Oliver’s living room.

“A bit narcissistic, don’t you think?” he raises an eyebrow at her when he sees it.

“I prefer to think of it as fitting,” she smiles. Both of them pretend to ignore that fact that Oliver hasn’t been able to pick up the bow since Chase’s torture.

She hangs the painting on his living room wall, and admires the way the light of the dusk glints off the frame.

The Hood; proclaim the two words printed by the artist’s signature on the bottom right corner.

 _The Hood indeed,_ she thinks.

 *

_Where is the Arrow?_

_It’s been two weeks since an Arrow sighting, and Starling grows weary without her protector. Arrow-watch members, if you have made a legit Arrow sighting, let us know and post below for comments! We miss our hooded hero._

_Wherever he is, we hope he is injury-free, well and kicking ass in those green leather pants._

_*_

Felicity keeps track of Arrow mentions online.

It is crucial to her job as Overwatch, to know what is out there, to figure out if a “fan” has figured out too much or too little. She knows the twitter handles of most of the fervent Arrow admirers. She has bookmarked a bunch of tumblr blogs who follow his every move. She keeps track of both the love and the hate, but is particularly fond of spending hours reading through the fan blogs.

Their lives are so crazy that it is easy to get lost in the negativity of it all. Oliver especially has the tendency to take the blows hard and shrug off appreciation easily.

He is sleeping again on the cot, his breath coming in uneasy catches and gasps. His ribs are still bothering him, and the lung infection that Diggle predicted has since come to pass. (She is going to find a particularly painful way to destroy Chase, see if she doesn’t.)

She works at her station, switching screens between monitors, scrolling through Tumblr and Twitter and Instagram, reading Arrow mentions on the news, flipping through editorials and online blogs.

_What Starling has that other cities do not: A hero in love with her_

St _arling’s Green Arrow_

W _here is he? Starlingers look to the rooftops for a sight of the hood_

_Three weeks and counting_

She stops scrolling when she comes across a long personal blog post, a birth announcement of sorts from one of the frequent Arrow fan bloggers. She looks at Oliver again, ensuring that he’s still sleeping peacefully and clicks on the link.

_Umm.. I’ve never done this before, and I am a little scared to put this out there. I’ve been running this blog for almost four years now. I’ve always been the user @hoodofgreenandheartofGold, and you will pry that handle away from my cold dead hands. I created this blog two days after the Hood rescued me._

_I have thought long and hard about telling this story, but without an Arrow sighting for nearly three weeks, and with a newborn daughter in my arms for perspective, I have decided that this story needs to be told._

_It was four years ago. It was his first year in the Hood, I think. He is the Green Arrow today, but he was the body dropping vigilante Hood that first year. He wasn’t the Starling hero he is now. People were apprehensive about him, and he was terrifying to some of the really wealthy families._

_I remember that night like it was yesterday. I was walking home through the glades, (which looking back, was incredibly stupid of me). I won’t get into most of what happened to me that night (and believe me, I have tried. Three years of therapy and my hands still shake when I think about. About. About. That’s all I can get out.)_

_All I will say is that I was very young and foolishly reckless, and the world is a horrible place, and I was weeping into my bloody hands in an alleyway in the glades. My clothes were torn, and there was blood between my legs, and everywhere I turned, I saw the crimson horror of all the things human beings were capable of doing to each other._

_I was waiting for death to find me, the chill prickling my skin, my limbs a deadweight, and I was shaking, lying on the filthy floor and looking up into the stars. The skies are usually hazy with factory smoke in the glades, but I remember the night being unusually clear that evening. I remember thinking, if I must go, at least I am going with such an amazing view of the heavens._

_Everything was pain, before he very quietly, very gently, showed me the kindness of a stranger._

_"Hello.”_

_People think his voice is altered by some kind of modulator. Those he’s rescued certainly attest to it. On the night of the Starling quake, many people recorded sounds of him yelling commands into a comm unit while pulling people out of buildings._

  _I don’t know about the veracity of those claims, because that night, there was no artifice or deceit in the way he addressed me. There I was, lying on the floor with nothing hidden, nothing left to expose; so perhaps he thought that he owed me honesty, that he owed me openness._

  _Isn’t it funny, when in reality he owed me nothing at all. He owes this city nothing, and yet he gives._

  _“Hello,” he said again, and his voice was very quiet, I could barely hear him over my own gasping, hitching sobs. “Can I get you some help, please?”_

  _The Hood is ridiculously polite and well-mannered, who knew?_

  _“Just - leave,” I remember croaking out. I was in a great deal of pain, and I only saw red. I remember because I can’t recall the vivid emerald of his early hood. People who’ve met him all describe how vivid that green actually is, but that night, I don’t remember seeing any colors._

  _“I am afraid I can’t do that, miss.” Like I said, ridiculously polite. “Would you mind if I sat down?”_

  _He must have taken my pained shrug for consent, as he sat down on the filthy alleyway floor beside me, his back to the wall. He was close enough for me to feel the warmth radiating off his body in all that leather, and I remember thinking,_ this is it, I am dead, I am hallucinating, because the Hood of Starling seems to have such blue eyes.

  _His eyes were blue, and filled with so much pain._

  _He shrugged out of his green hood down to his black undershirt, something we know today he wears under that armor, but back then, nobody knew much about the mysterious Starling killer that he was._

_“You’re freezing, miss, would you mind if I put this on you?”_

  _I can’t recall much of the details, but soon I was sitting on the floor in his thick, warm jacket and he was looking through one of the pockets of his belt for ace bandages. I remember how he kept finding toffees and spiderman band-aids in his belt; this is our big, bad vigilante - with a sweet tooth and a penchant for superheroes._

 Felicity laughs, remembering how she’d stash his pockets with sweets in the early days to get him to eat sugar.

  _“Please let me call an ambulance,” he kept saying to me. “I can patch you up but you should see a medical professional. Ma’am. Are you with me? Hey, hey, tell me your name, come on, tell me something about you. Look at me, stay awake, you’re okay.”_

  _He was very gentle. I remember that. There is much about that night that I don’t remember and a ton more than I wish I could forget, but it’s never him. Every little glimpse of him I got that night, I will cherish for the rest of my life._

  _I told him my name, and I asked him his._

  _“The Hood seems to be catching on,” he smiled at me. “Are you allergic to anything? I have got some lidocaine. It will help with the bleeding.”_

  _I didn’t want to go to a hospital. I was certain I was about to die, and that was alright. Going on to live after tonight, that would be much worse. I thought of my mother, fifty seven years old and so very proud of her daughter. I thought of my baby brother, first year of medical school and the responsible one in the family. I thought of my boyfriend, I thought of them all and my own cowardliness. I couldn’t face any of them. I couldn’t accept the kindness of this stranger whose eyes were filled with more pain than my own._

  _He gave me that lidocaine shot, and I remember barely feeling it._

  _“Tell me something real,” I asked him, because I wanted anything, needed something to keep holding on. Something banal._

  _“You look like my sister,” he said._ Oh Oliver. Felicity shakes her head, tears in her eyes.

 “ _The Hood has a sister?” I asked, incredulous._

  _“I have a sister,” he corrected, even though I didn’t understand the difference. “You look about as old as her.”_

  _“Tell me about her.”_

  _“She is beautiful.”_

  _“Is she?”_

 " _Beautiful. She has the grace of my mother. Whip smart, and a kind heart. She inherited all that is best in my family.”_

  _“Do you love her?”_

  _“Immensely.”_

  _“Do you tell her that?”_

  _“Not as much as I ought to.”_

  _“You should tell her everyday. There’s so many things we don’t say -”_

  _“What do you regret?” he asked me._

  _“Telling my baby brother that I love him. Saving money for college. He’s in med school on the other coast.”_

  _“If he were here, he’d be telling you right now that you need a doctor.”_

  _“He’s the smart one and I am the stubborn one.”_

  _“What else?”_

  _“I regret - my boyfriend, I was horrible. I cheated on him and never came clean - I am so sorry,_ so sorry -”

  _“Hey, hey,” he put a hand to my back to keep me upright against the wall. “Hey, it’s alright, stay with me, keep talking, stay with me.”_

  _“I never apologized.”_

  _“So you owe him an apology,” he said to me. “You owe it to him. Don’t chicken out now, yeah? You have gotta get better, go see him and give him that apology.”_

  _“I am in love with him.”_

  _“That’s wonderful.”_

  _“He’s gonna hate me.”_

  _“You know something I have learned? People can be endlessly forgiving. All we can do is keep trying to deserve their forgiveness.”_

  _Philosopher 2.0, the Hood of Starling._

  _“I am so sorry,” I remember practically sobbing into his green jacket._

  _“It’s alright,” he said, and he was so gentle. I remember noticing even then, about how gentle he was, how different from the image in the media of the cold, stone-hearted killer they painted him to be. We will never be certain if he dropped those bodies, but that night, I remember thinking, he is a better person than me, because here he was, sitting with a stranger in a dirty alley, handing out band-aids and wisdom, pretending like we were two people who met on a train having a conversation, pretending that I was not exposed in impolite places, practically naked, and that he wasn’t pressing down on my hipbone to keep me from bleeding out._

  _“Why are you doing this?”_

  _“It will be very boring if we both sit together and don’t talk, don’t you think?”_

  _“Not this,” I had asked. “Though I don’t know why you are talking to me either. But why do you do what you do? Did you kill all those people?”_

  _“What do you think?”_

  _“I don’t know anything anymore,” I told him. “You should leave me and go. Don’t you have bad guys to shoot arrows in?”_

  _“Not tonight,” he told me with sincerity. “Tonight, I get to sit with you and talk about brothers and sisters. And exes we’ve cheated on.”_

  _“You cheated on someone.”_

  _He smiled at me in that secretive way of his that I was learning to hate._

  _“Fine, don’t tell me.”_

  _“What can I say that will make you come with me to a hospital?”_

  _“Nothing,” I insisted. “Just sit with me. Why green?”_

  _“Someone very special gave me this jacket. They liked green. It belonged to their father.”_

  _“It smells like - I dunno -”_

  _“Pine trees and dewdrops and early morning sunshine.”_

  _The Hood of Starling, also a poet._

  _“Yes, all of those.”_

  _“It smells like memories. It probably smells different to you, because someone once told me that all of our memories create a unique brand of smells that we associate to emotions. Happiness, fondness, sadness.”_

  _“What about the jacket, then? For you, I mean. What emotion does it make you think of?”_

  _“Innocence,” he said, and I was taken aback. “The person who used to wear it before me, well, they - she - used to have a smile like a child’s.”_

  _“That’s ironic, I mean you wear it now to -”_

  _“I know.”_

  _“Why do you do this?” I took his hands in my bloody ones. They were warm and pink in the cold, and I could feel how steady they were. They were hands you could hold on to, you could rely on. “Tell me the truth. Tell me something. Anything that could mean it’s worth hanging on for.”_

  _“Why wouldn’t you hang on?”_

  _“The world is a horrible place.”_

  _“It can be,” he agreed._

  _“But you do this anyway,” I kept prodding. “You put on this hood, this hood that reminds you of innocence and go out there to sit with strangers in alleyways and put holes in bad people.”_

  _“I do this because - how could I not?”_

  _“Other people don’t do this.”_

  _“They do,” he disagreed. “They all put on a hood in their own way. Some people work at soup kitchens, others fight tooth and nail to pass legislation that helps another person. Some people fight in the military. Some people fight to protect the environment. I have a friend who writes code everyday that protect soldiers in battlefields. They are all people who do what they can. They are all people who put on a Hood.”_

  _“You do too.”_

  _“Yes.”_

  _“You still haven’t told me why.”_

  _“Does the why of it all matter?”_

  _“Maybe it does to me,” I told him. “It does to me, in this moment, in this place. Because I need a_ why _to live on. If I have a_ why, _maybe I can figure out the_ how.”

  _“I don’t know why I started doing this,” he told me, and there was doubt in his voice, uncertainty, like he was trying to understand. “I mean, there are the reasons I tell myself, that I tell my - partners. Sometimes I wonder if they are the only ones.”_

  _“Like what?”_

  _“One reason is, somebody has to do this. Might as well be me.”_

  _“What’s another?”_

  _“I cannot accept that just because the world is a horrible place sometimes, I don’t have an obligation to make it better.”_

  _“What’s the point? It will all go to hell, anyway.”_

  _“The point is that I tried,” he told me, and I remember thinking about the improbability of this idealist picking up a bow to kill people. “The point is sitting back and doing nothing will not help the world be better. If I tried just a little bit on just one day, maybe, just maybe, I might have brightened the world for one person. And that one person matters. They all matter.”_

  _“Nobody will thank you for this, you know.”_

  _“I don’t need them to.”_

  _“What do you get in return? They will put your hood on effigies and burn them to the ground. They will shoot you and make you bleed.”_

  _“If I do this with an expectation of return, I am doing something very wrong.”_

  _“This city will suck your life out of you and leave you bare, you know.”_

  _“What do you do?”_

  _“I work in social activism,” I told him. “I work at ****** ****.”_

 " _That’s your hood, then,” he smiled at me. “If you died tonight, think of the homes in this city that don’t get clean drinking water.”_

  _“Somebody else will do my job. Nobody is indispensible.”_

  _“But you’re not that person,” he said. “You need to finish the job you started. Come on, up you get. I am calling an ambulance.”_

  _“If they get here, you will have to leave.”_

  _“Not for the EMTs,” he told me. “They know me. It’s the cops that have orders to shoot me on sight.”_

  _“Are you saying I am not the first woman you’ve spent the night with in an alleyway, waiting for the EMTs? Now he tells me.”_

  _He laughed._

  _“Just leave me and go.”_

  _“Can’t anymore,” he took my hand. I saw him turn on a switch by his ear, a wired comm unit, and murmur our location for an ambulance. (I am wary to reveal too many details about his identity on here, and I was originally going to redact this portion. But since the quakes, it is common knowledge that the Arrow works with at least one partner.)_

  _“Will you sit with me until they arrive?”_

  _“Of course,” he swore. “I have to wheedle more promises from you.”_

  _“Like what?”_

_"That you will fight like hell to stay alive,” he asked. “That you won’t give up. That you won’t chicken out, that you will tell that boyfriend of yours that you love him. That you will go to your brother’s medical school graduation. That you will keep fighting to get the residents of the Glades clean drinking water.”_

" _I don’t know if I can even stay upright.”_

  _“That’s the doctor’s problem. You will be fixed up soon,” he smiled at me. “And then, it’s game time. You’ve got to promise me.”_

  _“What do you get out of all this? Why does it matter to you if I went to my brother’s graduation?”_

  _“It matters to your brother. It matters to you, and because we have shared this lovely evening together, it matters to me. You asked me why I do what I do. Maybe you can show me why, by living a good life.”_

_“I am scared.”_

  _“Join the club,” he laughed. “We’re all scared in this horrible world, but at least we are scared together.”_

_He sat with me till the EMTs arrived, and even after that,he held my hand as they loaded me on a stretcher and into the back of an ambulance. Before losing consciousness, I remember asking the EMT to return his jacket back to him. A week later, pictures of him busting a gang in Chinatown proved to me that eventually it made its way back to him._

_Good. I wanted him to retain that piece of innocence. I could tell it had great personal significance._

_Since getting out of that hospital, I have fought tooth and nail to keep my promises to him. I put myself through therapy, because if he could pick up a bow and arrow and run into burning buildings, I refused to let the trauma of that night keep me from living my life._

_I did tell my boyfriend the truth, and against all odds, over the next two years, we made our relationship work. Three years since that encounter in the alleyway, almost to the day, we got married, Arrow cake topper and all. Seven days ago, we had our first child together, my beautiful daughter. This summer, my brother will walk at his graduation and take the Hippocratic Oath, promising_ first to do no harm _. I will be there with my husband and my daughter to cheer him on._

_Every single day, I fight for legislation that mandates clean and free water availability to some of the poorest localities of our country. Every single day, I remember that we are stronger than our fears. I remember the kindness of that stranger on a dark and cold night, and the pain in his eyes. I remember that he kept fighting, and that he held my hand on the worst night of my life._

_I hold my daughter in my arms as I type this today, and I remember all the ways in which this day might not have been. How easy it would have been for him to walk away that cold night. But he didn’t. He sat with a scared, lonely, bitter woman and held her hand._

_I don’t still know why he fights. That night, he didn’t either. But today, I fight because of him. I fight for Starling because he showed me how._

_If I saw him today, I will say thank you. Thank you for being kind. Thank you for teaching me courage. Thank you for being who you are. I will ask him about his sister, if she is alright, if she is a fighter like he is. He hasn’t been seen in three weeks, so I will tease him about the women in alleyways that are keeping him busy. I will ask him if he is happy, if he has retired._

_But mainly, I will thank him for helping me find my Hood._

_**_

The lights in the lair are dim, as Felicity wipes her eyes, turning off the monitor. She prints out the entire post, folds the sheet of paper and leaves it under the glass of water and ibuprofen next to Oliver’s cot.

He’s beating himself up over everything that’s bad in him. She won’t rest till she’s showed him the good.

*

Thea tries to talk to him.

He shuts down faster than she’s ever seen him do before, all of his walls coming back up. Felicity hasn’t seen him like this since that first year back from the island.

Felicity keeps busy, trying to find links between Chase and a dozen criminal activities in the city; but the challenge is to turn up evidence that isn’t inadmissible in court. Oliver wasn’t kidding when he said he won’t put on the hood again, because over the next month, he doesn’t step out in the field even once.

He insists vehemently that Digg, Curtis and the others shouldn’t either, but the team has learned to ignore him when he’s being stupid.

On the other hand, Mayor Queen gets enormously productive in office, hiring new staff, working round the clock to push several of his social agenda through execution. He works like he doesn’t care about re-election (which, to be honest, he doesn’t) and it is refreshing.

Felicity has to admit that he is better suited for this than he was for leading Queen Consolidated, and she sees him in this new light with pride.

At night, he goes home to his new apartment where she can no longer keep an eye on him. When he slept in the lair, she knew when he tossed and turned. She knew the number of hours he spent beating on the training dummy. Now she has to go on the purple bags under his eyes and the state of his hair to understand if he’s doing alright.

He is not.

She worries quietly, fumes angrily and they run around in circles for a few more weeks.

*

There is a part of her that is happy he won’t be the Arrow anymore.

If anyone’s deserved a retirement, it’s him. She can’t live without this life, he’s gotten her invested and addicted to the rush of it, to the idea of being part of something bigger than herself. But for him, she wants nothing more than rest and happiness.

She wants him to get eight hours of sleep every night and eat three meals a day.

She’d still be happy about this break from Arrowing if he was actually well-rested or happy.

He works like a ghost in the weeks following his encounter with Chase. She goes to city hall a few weeks after the Mayor’s launch of a taskforce to commit to clean sanitation in the Glades. At two in the morning, she finds him holding a war room meeting with forty staffers, bent over a white board.

Arrowing suited him. Mayoring is like a second skin.

“I am saying we can do better,” he is pointing emphatically at some of the early drafts of the proposal. “This isn’t - this is not an improvement over the existing infrastructure. It barely makes a dent. I want to know what is stopping this team from being bolder. I thought we had more coverage in the versions we saw in October.”

“Carol drafted those as part of the Clean Water Initiative. She is out this week, because she’s had a baby.”

“We can’t wait on clean water because someone is out of the office,” he says vehemently. “Get it together, please. Felicity? What are you doing here?”

“Sorry to intrude - didn’t know it was going to be in full swing still - do you have a minute?”

“Excuse me, folks,” he says to his staff scattered around the room over laptops and markers. “Keep working at it please.”

He pulls her aside, shutting the meeting room behind him.

“Yes?”

“Carol? Clean Water Initiative?” she prompts.

“Yes, she is out having a baby,” he agrees. “What did you need?”

She shakes her head at his obliviousness. Leave it to him to be entirely unaware of lives he changed.

“Never mind,” she tells him. “I brought takeout, and a hundred thousand dollar donation from Ford Industries to the city for the efforts toward improving clean water and sanitation in the Glades.”

“What?”

“We might have had a conversation with the CEO about good causes he should support if he wanted my technology and my patent licenses.”

“Felicity.”

“Thai food? I bought basil fried rice.”

He looks at her like she’s a miracle, eyes melty and soft. The slump of his shoulders and the bags under his eyes tell the story of his exhaustion, but here he is, still fighting.

She smiles at him, and pulls out cartons of rice. She will never get tired of watching him eat.

“So, about the science in schools initiative -”

They start talking, and don’t stop late into the night.

She realizes she is still in love with him. With this new side of him. With every version of him.

*

Digg and her talk about this all the time.

They talk about whether they should push Oliver to get back in the hood. The team misses him. They definitely need him. Digg feels his absence in the field like a missing limb.

But they aren’t able to manage to get him back in the lair to provide Overwatch with tactical input.

“I have seen this in soldiers returning from Iraq,” Digg tells her one night over wine. “Where they completely cut off from that world. He’s terrified of himself, so he won’t go back in.”

“I am not inclined to push him on it,” she admits. She saw him cup his hands around a warm mug of coffee this morning, a gesture so foreign from him that she was taken aback pleasantly. Maybe normal _is_ good for him.

“You know what?” Digg smiles at her. “Neither am I.”  
*

Over candle light, in the middle of a power failure in the lair, pouring over legal briefs, she says to him, “let’s try again. Let’s date.”

He looks at her shocked, pen halfway to the paper to make some changes to whatever he’s reading.

“I am serious,” she insists. “I think I am ready, and if you are too, then -”

“Felicity.”

His tone makes her pause. He looks shaken, and horrified, she realizes he is holding back tears. He looks shattered, and terrified.

“Oliver -”

“I can’t,” he tells her, voice shaking.

The sting of rejection is inevitable, and even though she knows he isn’t being cruel, it still hurts. Even though she understands.

“It’s alright, I just thought -”

“Getting over you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” he says, and all the blood seems drained from his face.

He’s fought mirakuru soldiers. He’s brought his sister back from the dead. He’s been stabbed through a lung. He’s been marooned on an island for five years of hell. He’s been tied up and made to choose between his mother and sister.

And he says getting over her was the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.

She can’t be angry with him. She can’t be hurt. She can’t do anything but respect his feelings.

“I get it, Oliver.”

“I am sorry,” he says again, emotions written clearly all over his face. “I can’t go through this again. If you change your mind, or if I screw it up again - I can’t - it hurt too much the last time.”

“I am sorry too,” she says. Screw it, she is crying now. “I am so sorry.”

“We are such idiots,” he holds out his arms and she walks into them willingly. He hugs her and kisses her hair. She holds on to him, and realizes that she will always have him, no matter what. That they will both have pieces of each other.

_***_

Some days, they are barely functioning.

Some days are so bad that his hands shake, and he wakes up screaming. Some days, he bites his teeth and puts on another coat even though the heating in his office is up and people have windows open.

Some days, she finds him no different than a dead man walking. Some days, she tosses and turns in bed,  dreaming of every scenario in which she might let her new team down. Some days, Digg and her sit up late into the night talking about every fear that paralyzes them. Some days, she has to fight for a memory of Oliver smiling. Some days are sent straight from hell and go straight to hell.

But they are worth it for the good days.

Because on the good days, Oliver seems like any other normal guy. Oliver could be the person who went to college and took a gap year and had his heartbroken by his first love.

One some days, Oliver could be the re-elected mayor on a swansong upward rise after a life of toil and turmoil. One some days, Oliver bares no resemblance to the vigilante Chase locked in a dungeon cell and tortured. On some days, Oliver could pass for someone who didn’t spend five years in hell.

The good days are worth it for the bad ones.

Even if he doesn’t put on the Hood anymore, even if they can’t put a definition on what they have together, he showed them all that there’s more than one way to fight.

She makes her peace with that.

~ finis ~

**Author's Note:**

> Arrow 5x17 Kapuishon is my favorite episode so far. It went to some very bold places. Can you tell? 
> 
> Please leave a comment. And come say hi on [tumblr](http://baffledkingcomposinghallelujah.tumblr.com/), I don't bite.


End file.
